Arresting times
Peaceful activists arrested in run up to royal wedding
Quakers are among those voicing concern over the widespread arrest of activists in the run-up to last week’s royal wedding. A number of Friends were affected by police action that saw dozens of people taken into custody before and during the event.
Many of those arrested insist that they are peaceful campaigners. The police and press have been accused of targeting people for ‘pre-crime’ and stirring up prejudices and negative stereotypes of activists.
Hannah Eiseman-Renyard, who grew up in a Quaker family and says she is still very influenced by Quakerism, was arrested during a peaceful protest at Soho Square on the day of the wedding.
She was dressed as a zombie to attend a ‘zombie wedding’ event organised by Queer Resistance. Police stopped and searched several of those involved before saying they had received orders to arrest them. They were detained in police cells until the wedding events were over.
‘They perceived it as an anti-royal demonstration and they wanted that out of the public eye,’ said Hannah Eiseman-Renyard. She told the Friend that the officer who arrested her was keen to emphasise that the order had come from higher up. She accused the police authorities of encouraging ‘arbitrary arrests’.
Along with other activists, she is seeking professional advice about the legality of the police’s behaviour.
The Metropolitan Police did not reply to the Friend’s request for details of the number and nature of arrests on the day before the wedding. Civil liberties groups are attempting to compile data. Arrests were reported as far away as Edinburgh, while police raided five squats in London and several in Brighton.
There were fourteen arrests in Camberwell, south London, after a raid on Ratstar, a grassroots social and community centre. A Quaker attender, who was present at Ratstar on the day, told the Friend it would be ‘ridiculous’ to regard all those arrested as violent extremists. She described the raid as ‘politically motivated’ because ‘the timing of it seems obviously related to the royal wedding’.
The Metropolitan Police insisted that the arrests were not ‘specifically related to the royal wedding but have been brought forward ahead of the event’.
An unknown number of individuals were arrested before the wedding for conspiracy to cause a breach of the peace or a public nuisance. Charlie Veitch, who was arrested in Cambridge, described the police tactics as ‘Orwellian’ and insisted he was planning to protest peacefully.
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